Music: Any number of fine pianists visits South Florida each year during the season, and a series of lesser-known but still formidable players are on hand each winter to perform recitals at Lynn University in Boca Raton. But Saturday night, one of the best pianists of an older generation, Peter Serkin, will join that series in a recital at Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall. His … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 24-26
Dance: Americans have been getting into the holiday spirit with Tchaikovsky ever since the 1950s, when George Balanchine resurrected an overlooked part of a double-bill (with the one-act opera Iolanta) from 1892 about a girl’s magical Christmas in which a nutcracker battles to the death with the Mouse King and rodent horde and ends up in the arms of a prince. The story, by … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 18-19
Dance: Miami City Ballet opens its first show of the season this weekend at the Kravis Center with his triptych, Jewels. Divided into Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds, and set to the music of Fauré, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, this three-act ballet evokes French Romanticism, 20th-century modernism and Imperial Russia. While MCB has branched out considerably in its past few years, … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 10-12
Music: One of the great tragic heroines of Italian bel canto opera returns Saturday night as Florida Grand Opera opens its new season with Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. The American soprano Anna Christy stars as the Scots noblewoman driven mad on her wedding night because of her forced marriage to a man she does not love. In addition to this tour de force scene, Donizetti’s … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 6-8
Art: If there’s a more important art exhibit in the area than Justin Brice Guariglia’s Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene, now at the Norton, we’d be hard-pressed to tell you what it is. Guariglia is a photographer who is accredited to NASA, which in 2015 and 2016 investigated the shrinking glaciers of Greenland. Guariglia turned his photos of what he saw into artworks that, … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 26-27
Music: Piano duos are not so common that they can be overlooked when they pop up, and since we’re in the last weeks before the season starts getting underway again, it’s a good time to catch one. On Sunday at the Boca Steinway Gallery, two fine Miami-based pianists, Tian Ying and Anastasiya Naplekova, team up for a concert of standout works for this combination, including … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 19-20
Film: Add to the list of offbeat competition documentaries like the spelling bee in Spellbound and the foxtrot battle of 2005’s Mad Hot Ballroom, an involving tale of inner-city Baltimore and the precision step dance contest, called simply Step. But far more is at stake at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, a recent charter school that strives not only to graduate … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 29-30
Film: I have little patience for horror films, so I almost skipped seeing A Ghost Story, which would have been a big mistake. Yes, it sounds like a spooky tale of spectral jolts, but instead it turns out to be a psychological study of the afterlife, reassuring in its affirmation of the beyond. Director David Lowery gathers an A-list cast headed by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 22-23
Film: As Variety puts it, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is the first slam-dunk of the year for a best picture Oscar nomination. Possibly so, but certainly in a summer season crowded with comic book-based superhero epics, Nolan’s tale of the crucial World War II battle in Northern France sticks out as a serious history lesson aimed at an adult audience. That is not to say there … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 14-16
Art: Allons, enfants, to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach on Saturday for a celebration of all things French (for Bastille Day, which is today). Beginning at noon Saturday and running until 5 p.m., the free festival offers French-language instruction from Natacha Koblova of the Multilingual Language and Cultural Society, classic French film (The Red Balloon), music … [Read more...]